SHINSUKE AOKI (LEFT) IN AUGUST IN THE WATER

GAKURYÜ ISHII: AUGUST IN THE WATER (1995)

Teenage lovers glimpse apocalyptic futures

Strange incidents happen to Izumi (Rena Komine), a young diving star transferred from another school now united with a new boyfriend, Mao (Shinsuke Aoki). During a competition, Izumi falls from a high pltform and sinks to the bottom of the pool. Mao jumps in and rescues her. She is hospitalized in a coma. Soon she comes out, but changed. This revival from thirty years ago is a quaint and charming and ultimately amazingly beautiful mixture of fantasy, science fiction, cosmic mysticism, teen romance, coming of age, and ecological parable. This is pointed out in a discussion of the film on Screen Anarchy by Niels Matthijs, and others. The mix of image and sound is world-class here and Gakuryû Ishii is a discovery for those of us who hadn't heard of him.

In the film, water starts running out, even though there is still plenty of water in the pool where its impressive diving platforms where Izumi fell. People start dropping down in the street (and people ignore them) and their organs turn to stone (the "stone disease"), which seems to be the result of the two meteorites that crash improbably, on a mountain very close together from very remote distances apart in space. What has happened to Izumi? Does she have new wisdom implanted in her from a remote galaxy?

One writer (Coeval Magazine), who provides a plethora of stills, sums up events with "Isuku’s town is in cosmic trouble: an oracle in the form of a proto-Internet zodiac app predicts problems on the pastel-colored horizon.' So there is that, too; and Izumi consults astrology books.

Rather than any impressive special effects, AUgust in the Water is memorable for its prolonged sequence of girls performing in a high-level diving competition, and also for its traditional festival with men bare-assed huddled together pushing through the streets. When Izumi is recognized as having special knowledge, a group of experts, and the handsome boyfriend, sit together facing a big, high up Sony television set watching Izumi. Remember when those big Sony TV's were the state of the art?

A website called Onderhond Movie Meter calls August in the Water as one of Ishii's "hidden gems" that is "yet to be discovered even by most fans." While Ishii is known as a master of Japanese punk cinema, full of dirt and mess, this is something different, peacefull, beautiful and haunting, and a mix, as the writer says "part romance, part fantasy, part sci-fi and part coming of age with some meandering philosophy [thrown] in."

The Coeval writer sums up: "Ecocriticism inflected with coming-of-age romance, August in the Water is a new-age love story from the precipice of a new millennium. With a haunting minimal vaporwave score by Hiroyuki Onogawa, Ishii’s film offers a touching answer to the alienation of teenage girlhood." Yes, "from the precipice of a new millennium," this seemingly dated charmer also looks into the future and has a nice score accompanying a great mixture of pleasing images. For a revival, it's a worthy, unexpected selection that may suggest films as far apart as Donnie Darko, Godard's Alphaville and Cocteau's Blood of a Poet.

At the end things turn around and the rains come, and what rains they are: it's a magnificent sequence, just one of several here that reveals Ishii to be a remarkable filmmaker, though from the descriptions, he has various styles, and this is not his most typical one (perhaps his 2023 The Box Man, also in this year's Japan Cuts, is more typical). Recommended.

August in the Water 水の中の八月, 117 mins., premiered in Japan Sept. 9, 1995. Festivals: Goteberg Feb. 2, 1996; Brussels Mar. 1996; Pusan Sept. 1996; San Sebastian, Singapore, UK, Taiwan, Germany. Screened for this review as part of the 2024 New York Japan Cuts series (Jul. 10-21).

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.